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Reposted by Andy Farke

Eric Scott @captainfossil.bsky.social · 4d

Happy 120 years of Tyrannosaurus rex and Albertosaurus sarcophagus! Both of these iconic dinosaur species were named by paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn on this day back in 1905. (Yes, this would have been a good #FossilFriday post, but it's Saturday and I'm terribly literal.) 🦖🧪

Mounted skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. View is looking up at the complete skeleton w/ the skull to the left & the tail to the right; there are plants and another dino skeleton beneath the mount and a grey museum roof above. This particular skeleton is important because it is the holotype specimen of the species (although the skull here is a cast because the actual skull is far too heavy to be mounted this way).

Skull of Albertosaurus sarcophagus on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 5d

For #FossilFriday - a wonderful profile of U Nebraska fossil preparator Carrie Herbel! Carrie was a core mentor during my undergrad at SDSM&T, and a big part of getting me launched into the field. She continues to do fantastic work as a museum professional! 🧪

Herbel helps preserve Nebraska’s legacy, one bone at a time | Nebraska Today

A full-circle moment brought Carrie Herbel back to Nebraska to take a position once held by a mentor. The chief preparator at the University of Nebraska State Museum is being honored today for 10 year...

news.unl.edu

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Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 5d

This adorable oreodont family has had quite a journey. Paul Miller made this mount for the U of Chicago Walker Museum in 1924. They were transferred to the Field when the Walker shut down, then loaned to the BYU museum for 60 years. The oreodonts are now back in Chicago. #FossilFriday

Framed plaster slab with three mounted Miniochoerus skeletons

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Journal of Evolutionary Biology @jevbio.bsky.social · 7d

We mapped vertebral shape variation in rabbits, hares & relatives, from within species to across mammals. Patterns differ by scale, revealing new insights into how the spine evolves: doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Taewcharoen et al. @anatomygiraffe.bsky.social

Multi-level analysis of morphological variation in the vertebral column of lagomorph mammals

Abstract. Characterizing morphological variation along the vertebral column of mammals is commonly investigated at a broad phylogenetic scale, leaving with

doi.org

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Z. Jack Tseng @tsengzj.bsky.social · 9d

New preprint: Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction. #Paleontology #Mammals #Extinction

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

TLDR: S. China mammals diversified dentally, tracked environment, then leveled up bite mechanics all within the first 10 m.y. post K-Pg.

Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction

The first 10 million years (Myr) following the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction marked a period of global greenhouse conditions and dramatic rise of placental mammals. Because ~80% of known...

www.biorxiv.org

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Kenneth De Baets @djbirddanerd.bsky.social · 12d

Just in time for #FossilFriday 🦖 What are the big questions in #paleontology today?

dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2025.10042

Nearly 200 scientists worldwide came together to map where our field is headed. Here’s the story 👇

Identifying the Big Questions in paleontology: a community-driven project | Paleobiology | Cambridge Core

Identifying the Big Questions in paleontology: a community-driven project

dx.doi.org

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 12d

I have no easy answers on this (and from what I know of many of the folks on this paper, they're not ones to downplay the smaller bits of research), but it's definitely something on my mind!

Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 12d

I know a lot of this is driven by external factors like grant agencies & non-paleo hiring committees, etc., but it is something that definitely bothers me. "Your work isn't significant enough to publish, but if you do publish it I'll gladly throw it in the supplemental info for my Nature paper."

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 12d

E.g., many journals wouldn't likely consider a range extension publishable, or a report on a fossil assemblage might be low priority, or a detailed morphological description...but these are exactly the data points needed for many "big questions".

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 12d

This is a very cool paper (I've skimmed it quickly), but I will say that one thing that makes me a *little* uneasy is the unfortunate history of "big question" driven research in paleo devaluing specimen-based research and the "little questions" that build datasets used in "big question" work.

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⚡️🔩Felsenstein's Monster🔩⚡️ @josephwb.bsky.social · 12d

Wowzers. A _ton_ of cool talks by amazing people available on @palaeoverse.bsky.social palaeoverse.org/lectures 🧪

Lectures

palaeoverse.org

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Reposted by Andy Farke

franz @franzanth.bsky.social · 12d

"The Netherlands plans to transfer more than 28,000 fossils from the Dubois collection to Indonesia, following a request by Indonesian authorities."

omg

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Reposted by Andy Farke

Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 15d

I was asked yesterday to post a walkthrough of Life Over Time, the shortest-lived and generally weirdest iteration of the Field Museum’s fossil halls. If you visited between 1994 and 2004, this is the version you saw. I’ve got some time, so let’s do this.

A carnival-like exhibit entrance with a dinosaur skull, coelacanth model, and pantodont skeleton in cases under freak show-style banners labeling them as "Mesozoic terror" and "the fish that wouldn't die'

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Montana Rosslyn (Comms Open) @montanoceratops.bsky.social · 15d

experiment.com/projects/rea...

Absolutely consider supporting this fundraiser. This is something extremely important to sauropod researcher and done by a team of amazing people, some i am fortunate to consider friends.

Reassessing the evolutionary family tree and biogeography of the iconic sauropod group Diplodocoidea

We are working on a special open-access volume dedicated to the famed diplodocoid sauropods (like Diplodocus). We aim to publish several papers describing their anatomy, osteology, evolutionary relati...

experiment.com

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Reposted by Andy Farke

Peter Wagner (a Real Dr., not a surgeon-barber/body-tech/golfer) @peterjwagner3.bsky.social · 15d

When does biology become geology? This is a fun paper for us (although I, myself, was just one more member of Band-Aid for this particular paper), and hopefully it helps clarify a lot of things that we sort of already knew but never really formally addressed.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

‘Earth system engineers’ and the cumulative impact of organisms in deep time

Understanding the role of humans as ‘ecosystem engineers’ requires a deep-time perspective rooted in evolutionary history and the fossil record. Howev…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 15d

Very cool and important specimen!

Claude ✡️🦖🦕 @cascoclauda.bsky.social · 15d

the paper authored by ibirucu et al. can be found here
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Latest Cretaceous megaraptorid theropod dinosaur sheds light on megaraptoran evolution and palaeobiology - Nature Communications

Megaraptoran theropod dinosaur anatomy and evolution is unclear due to the fragmentary nature of most available fossils. Here the authors report a well-preserved, late surviving megaraptoran from Argentina that clarifies our understanding of the morphology of this group and potentially provides insights into its diet and feeding strategies.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Andy Farke

Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 17d

i think regardless of who has authored a paper, we (the scientific community) can and should stop criticizing the work on lack of perceived novelty. we can do better than perpetuating harmful myths about individual scientific papers having to present a discovery no one has ever thought of before.

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 19d

Happy #FossilFriday! Check out this gorgeous juvenile hadrosaur jugal (cheek bone), collected this summer in the "Mesaverde" Formation of northwestern Wyoming. Our preparator Andrew is doing an amazing job cleaning it up. Collected under #BLMPaleo permit, accessioned at @alfpaleo.bsky.social 🧪

brown fossil bone, with 10 cm scale bar, on a white foam background

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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 19d

What’s a pirate’s favorite computer programming language?

You’d think it’s R, but no, their first love will always be the C.

Happy talk like a pirate day!

a man with a beard is wearing a pirate costume and laughing .

ALT: a man with a beard is wearing a pirate costume and laughing .

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Andy Farke

Peter Falkingham @peterfalkingham.com · 19d

Major update to Open Source photogrammetry software Meshroom

Meshroom has for some time been one of my top choices for open-source or free photogrammetry software, offering a really deep amount of customization and tinkering. However, while this blog made a big splash early on reviewing all the…

Major update to Open Source photogrammetry software Meshroom

Meshroom has for some time been one of my top choices for open-source or free photogrammetry software, offering a really deep amount of customization and tinkering. However, while this blog made a big splash early on reviewing all the different open-source photogrammetry software, I've found they haven't really kept up with Metashape or RealityScan, and I'm just not using them much any more.

peterfalkingham.com

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 19d

Also, this is an example of how field IDs change - I was reasonably sure it was a cranial bone, but had initially assumed it was postorbital. As the bone has been prepped, I struggled to make it a postorbital, though - and then it manifested as a jugal!

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 19d

Unfortunately, some pieces are lost to time - it's a bit frustrating! I may check out the site again next year; sometimes pieces can get turned up with another rainstorm.

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 19d

The volunteer who found the bone and I carefully crawled the ground leading up to the specimen, and found another piece of two. Then, we dryscreened the area, and found a few more pieces! I'm glad we did, because it fits together nicely.

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 19d

The specimen is a great example of how taking a little extra time to collect a fossil can pay off. Part of the bone was in situ on the underside of a low sandstone ledge - a piece or two was directly below it, but others had washed a good distance away.

white and reddish fossil bone on underside of sandstone, with scale bar

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 19d

Happy #FossilFriday! Check out this gorgeous juvenile hadrosaur jugal (cheek bone), collected this summer in the "Mesaverde" Formation of northwestern Wyoming. Our preparator Andrew is doing an amazing job cleaning it up. Collected under #BLMPaleo permit, accessioned at @alfpaleo.bsky.social 🧪

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